Chandrabindu
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Chandrabindu (meaning "moon-dot" in Sanskrit, alternatively spelled candrabindu, chandravindu, candravindu, or chôndrobindu) is a diacritic sign with the form of a dot inside the lower half of a circle. It is used in the Devanagari (ँ), Bengali (ঁ), Gujarati (ઁ), Oriya (ଁ), Telugu (ఁ), Javanese (ꦀ) and other scripts.
It usually means that the previous vowel is nasalized.
In Hindi, it is replaced in writing by anusvara when it is written above a consonant that carries a vowel symbol that extends above the top line.
In Classical Sanskrit, it seems to occur only over a lla conjunct consonant, to show that it is pronounced as a nasalized double l, which occurs if -nl- have become assimilated in sandhi.
In Vedic Sanskrit, it is used instead of anusvara to represent the sound anunaasika when the next word starts with a vowel. It usually occurs where in earlier times a word ended in -ans.
It should not be confused with another symbol, the fermata, which looks like an upside-down chandrabindu; it is an element of musical notation.
Unicode encodes chandrabindu and chandrabindu-like characters for a variety of scripts:
- U+1B01 ᬁ BALINESE SIGN ULU CANDRA
- U+1B00 ᬀ BALINESE SIGN ULU RICEM
- U+0981 ঁ BENGALI SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+11C3C 𑰼 BHAIKSUKI SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+11000 𑀀 BRAHMI SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0901 ँ DEVANAGARI SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+A8F2 ꣲ DEVANAGARI SIGN SPACING CANDRABINDU
- U+A8F3 ꣳ DEVANAGARI SIGN CANDRABINDU VIRAMA
- U+0900 ऀ DEVANAGARI SIGN INVERTED CANDRABINDU
- U+11301 𑌁 GRANTHA SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0A81 ઁ GUJARATI SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0A01 ਁ GURMUKHI SIGN ADAK BINDI
- U+0A70 ੰ GURMUKHI TIPPI
- U+A980 ꦀ JAVANESE SIGN PANYANGGA
- U+11080 𑂀 KAITHI SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0C81 ಁ KANNADA SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+1C34 ᰴ LEPCHA CONSONANT SIGN NYIN-DO
- U+1C35 ᰵ LEPCHA CONSONANT SIGN KANG
- U+0D01 ഁ MALAYALAM SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+11CB6 𑲶 MARCHEN SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+11443 𑑃 NEWA SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0B01 ଁ ORIYA SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+A873 ꡳ PHAGS-PA LETTER CANDRABINDU
- U+A8C5 ꣅ SAURASHTRA SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+115BC 𑖼 SIDDHAM SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0C01 ఁ TELUGU SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+0C00 ఀ TELUGU SIGN COMBINING CANDRABINDU ABOVE
- U+0F82 ྂ TIBETAN SIGN NYI ZLA NAA DA
- U+0F83 ྃ TIBETAN SIGN SNA LDAN
- U+114BF 𑒿 TIRHUTA SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+11A35 𑨵 ZANABAZAR SQUARE SIGN CANDRABINDU
- U+11A36 𑨶 ZANABAZAR SQUARE SIGN CANDRABINDU WITH ORNAMENT
- U+11A37 𑨷 ZANABAZAR SQUARE SIGN CANDRA WITH ORNAMENT
There is also a general-purpose combining diacritical mark COMBINING CANDRABINDU code point U+0310 (◌̐), but that is intended for use with Latin letters in transliteration of Indic languages.